Zone 2 runs

So the Coach had me do a zone 2 run for 50 minutes today. I did this on the treadmill for time constraints, convenience of HR monitoring, and the fact that it was cold outside and I just discovered my running pants have holes in *ahem* unmentionable places. Not that you'd notice on the average run, but still.

So, Zone 2 goes up to 153 bpm. Normally, in 50 minutes on a treadmill I can run 5 - 5.2 miles with no problem at all. Today, my heart rate kept creeping up into zone 3 - high 150s, even 160 at one point. I felt fine, but in an effort to try to keep it to the proscribed workout, I'd slow down and take it easy, even walking twice to get the heart rate down. I ended up with 4.8 miles, or an average pace of 10:28 per mile. Ick.

I've enjoyed getting faster over the last couple of years (knocking over an hour off my marathon time from marathon 1 to marathon 4)... and trying to keep it in zone 2 was just hard. Saturday I'm supposed to run in zone 2 for an hour, with 3 minute "surges" into zone 3 every 20 minutes. I'm just hoping I can keep the "surges" to 3 minutes long!